The document summarizes key insights from the 2014 Total Customer Experience Summit. It discusses how understanding the customer experience across all touchpoints can impact brands. It then provides 8 insights from the summit on improving the customer experience: 1) Build relationships by understanding customer emotional needs, 2) Give customer service representatives authority to resolve issues, 3) Your brand is how customers feel, 4) Save customers time, 5) Use customer feedback to resolve issues and improve, 6) Map the customer journey to find highlights and trouble spots, 7) Engaged employees are brand ambassadors, 8) Iterate improvements continuously. The overall message is that focusing on the customer experience and relationships can impact brands.

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Return on Relationships:
Eight Insights Gained from the
Total Customer Experience Summit
GLOBAL RESPONSE ATTENDED THE 2014 TOTAL
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SUMMIT, THIS YEAR IN MIAMI,
WHERE BUSINESS LEADERS CAME TOGETHER TO DISCUSS
HOW UNDERSTANDING AND IMPROVING THE CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE CAN IMPACT THEIR BRAND.
All customer touchpoints – whether on-line, in-person, or on-the-phone – impact the customer experience.

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As an increasing amount of transactions now occur via ecommerce, social media, email
and phone calls, brands are taking steps to deliver personalized customer experiences.
Building trust and long-term relationships requires a new approach in the digital age.
Therefore, brands are committed to rethink their approach to customer relationships,
and create an emotional connection with their customers.
A team from Global Response attended the Total Customer Experience Leaders
Summit (TCEL), held in Miami in early April. Chaired by — Scott Swift, Vice President of
Customer Information for Hunter Douglas — the summit offered sessions related to its
theme of “Return on Relationships: Factoring Empathy into the Stakeholder Equation.”
In his presentation Scott stated a key point from the conference:
“In today’s complex business world, delivering on the promise
of a great customer experience is more difficult than ever. We
rely more and more on business partners to manage key touch
points and represent our brand promise. Finding the right
partner and closely working with them is really the only way to
achieve a world-class customer experience.” – Scott Swift
Eight Insights on Improving the
Customer Experience
Here are eight actionable insights, taken from the show, on how to improve the
customer experience. Some apply directly to customer care, others deal with forward-
facing marketing efforts, but all are relevant to today’s brands.
• Build relationships by understanding your customers emotional needs
Customers want to make an emotional connection before conducting business—
a lesson that call center representatives can put into practice on phone calls,
email and chat interactions.
• Give authority to customer service representatives to resolve customer
inquiries
Customer service is not a case of one size fits all, so representatives who
acknowledge customers as individuals and are empowered to make things right
can deliver the kind of personalized experience that turns an unhappy customer
into a loyal one. When a customer reaches out stating that they had a less than
desired customer experience with your brand, giving customer service the
authority to make things right at the point of call can be the best opportunity to
gain a loyal customer. For this to happen, however, executives must buy in tothis
philosophy and expand the authority of the representatives.
• Your brand is how customers feel about your company, product or service
Scott Swift, VP of
Customer Information
at Hunter Douglas

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Surveying your customer experience can help you as a brand understand how
customers perceive the relationship they receive from your brand (and what they
would hope for in the future). The emotional connection customers feel can tell
you a lot about key areas for improvement and which areas you can highlight.
Exploring how touchpoints make your customer feel (about the experience, not
the product or service) can go a long way in enhancing your customer experience
and promoting your brand.
• Saving the customer time is a key area for improving the overall
experience
When looking at business practices through a customer-centric lens, focus on
saving time for your clientele. For example, sending callers to an IVR may
confuse end-users and take additional time to get a resolution. It may be better to
give your customers access to a human voice for immediate assistance rather
than risk frustrating them.
• Use customer feedback to resolve immediate needs and learn what to
improve for the future
Surveys are the most common source of customer feedback, but consider the
role of social media today and how important the unstructured data you receive
from posts, tweets, focus groups, and surveys, are. When looked at holistically
they can unearth trends your business should address. Even one-off responses
from individuals can contain insights you can apply.
• Map the customer experience journey to find highlights and trouble spots
Your brand can understand the bigger picture by mapping the customer journey
to find where your clientele experiences challenges, then use this earned insight
to improve the process for future interactions.
• Engaged employees are ambassadors for your brand
Involve your employees in company-wide policy decision processes early on,
because an engaged and invested employee helps create engaged and invested
customers. In the contact center, involving all representatives in improving
processes and solving problems increases their identification with not only the
brand, but their job satisfaction, which comes across in their interactions with
customers. An engaged employee engages customers.
• Iterate, iterate, iterate
Recognize that getting to the best possible customer experience is an iterative
process. Involve your customer care staff, marketing, executives, and even
customers, and continue gradually making improvements to get closer to your
goal.
In the end, the Total Customer Experience Summit can be framed by the poet Maya
Angelou’s quote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.